Monthly Archives: April 2017

(30.04)No.1215 – György Bakcsi & Zoltán Laborczi (s=5; Black Must Capture). Warm welcome to György & Zoltán in Original problems section of JF!Zoltán Laborczi writes about his co-author: “György Bakcsi has always had weak eyes and now he has been completely blind for a long time, but he continues composing chess problems solely in his head.”

(26.04)No.1212 – Peter Harris (hs#3 ; Nightrider ; Sentinels, Transmuted Kings, Anti-Circe, Isardam). Dedicated to Dirk Borst.
Peter mentions that Probleemblad has published many of his problems, but actually he dedicates this problem to Dirk in recognition of his agreeing to be JF’s Retro judge.I’m grateful to Peter too, for his care about me and JF. I have to tell also, that Peter’s words reminded me I haven’t appointed a fairy judge for the current period (01.01-30.06.2017) yet. Not only because of being too overloaded this year, but also because of my own work under the award of The Problemist’s Fairy section (2014), which makes me understand too good what a big work I’m asking for inviting a judge. Maybe anybody is willing to? (JV)

Animated diagrams use Py2Web by Dmitri Turevski and WinChloe’s graphics.

Composing Tourneys announced for the 12th Belgrade Problem Chess Festival 26th-28th May 2017 are split into 3 groups, including fairy Group C (HS#2.5 Max) which will be judged by solvers and composers themselves, in a special Composing-Solving-Judging contest on May 26th 2017, the first day of the Festival.

The BIT 2017 will use the method of entering originals for the tourney directly to the Mat Plus website. Composers unable to use it may send their entries by email to the Mat Plus administrator: borislav.gadjanski@gmail.com. Deadline: May 23rd 2017.

This e-booklet is a small tribute to CGSN, to celebrate his 70th birthday, which was on 24-Mar-2017. The 70 compositions included here form approximately 25% of his total oeuvre. I hope my selection captures his best and delights all readers.

CGSN, C.G.S.Narayanan, Chithathur Gopalan Sathyanarayanan is one of the world’s eminent chess problem composers. His main area of interest being the orthodox 2-mover, in the modern style, with changed mates and cyclic relationships. He is also strong in the orthodox 3-mover, which he started composing in the late 90s. He also composes to a smaller extent in other areas like helpmates, selfmates and fairies. Whatever be the area, his problems are marked by excellent construction, originality, economy and good solving difficulty. He avoids the hyper modern style where the content takes priority over other aspects…

It feels like so recently I proudly wrote about JF’s first year, but today this website celebrates the first real jubilee, 5 years.. and I don’t know where to start from..

What is JF for me? As a growing baby, requiring time and care, it is making me glad, and more and more busy, in the same time. I have some figures and facts to be proud of, like number 1200 in the section of originals (an average of 2 publications in 3 days); then average of 120 visits per day (about 80 unique ones) from 27-30 countries; 15 informal competitions and 5 thematic ones; animated solutions implemented since June 2014 with Dmitri Turevski’s help…
→ more…

Well, the first goal of JF’s informal competitions was fast publication, from the very beginning, and this is not easy to keep in the long-term period. It was easier in the beginning, not only because I was more enthusiastic, but also because the time brought me new duties: overtaking wfcc.ch website in 2013 followed by development of new sections (the last one being WSC and Rated solving tournaments out of WSC) with quite regular updates, accepting some judging, dedicating more time to my growing kids, and this year organizing ECSC in Riga… One of the things I regret is having less and less time for organizing thematic tourneys, and, especially – for my own composing…

You know, I’m really sorry about any delayed publication. In the same time I’m deeply grateful to the authors who save a lot of my time sending me their problems carefully prepared for publication, helping me even to do the animation faster. They know who they are, but I would like to mention at least some names: Vitaly Medintsev, Václav Kotěšovec, Aleksey Oganesjan, Karol Mlynka… Publication of one problem can take me from 15 minutes to several hours. When I receive initial position and the condition in a clear English notation (complete Popeye notation even better), including solutions with departure and arrival squares (especially for the problems impossible to be tested at all, or tested with Popeye) it is a huge help to prepare the publication with animation.

I wrote about the numbers of published problems and tournaments held. It would never happen without JF’s judges, accepting that hard work. You can see all the names in the sections of original problems, but I’d like to thank once again to those who have finished their awards: N.Shankar Ram, Juraj Brabec, Hans Gruber, Eric Huber, Vlaicu Crişan, Dmitri Turevski, Kjell Widlert, Ofer Comay, Franz Pachl and Petko Petkov, the judge of 4 thematic tournaments.

Your comments give an important contribution to JF. As in all blogs and forums, the comments on JF are most often pointed to some drawbacks, but there are members who give much more to the JF readers. For me, it is pleasant to see always positive approach by K. Seetharaman. Yes, chess composers are happy to see their ideas appreciated, in the first place. That’s why I introduced the “like” button this year, to assure more alive contact of authors and the audience. But also, it is useful for all members to see some deep analyses of the contents, even when more critical than polite. I apologize to all whom I forgot, but let me remind you of some interesting analyzes by Juraj Lorinc, Geoff Foster, Kjell Widlert, Nikola Predrag, Nicolas Dupont, Paul Rãican…

The last but not least, I would like to thank those composers who don’t use the JF to publish their composition the same day it was composed… Even after waiting some days to make sure they came to the optimal positions, they would publish their renderings faster than in printed magazines, and would avoid sending corrections and new versions when problems were already published. As for the editor, she will always be more impressed by the quality than by the quantity of published compositions!

Running the site, publishing different kinds of fairy problems, and announcements, I feel like learning all the time. But getting to know all of you who help me, who contribute to JF, who are part of “JF’s community”, means even more! The names, so many, from so different countries, turned into alive persons. And I know, this is in the both directions. Some years ago (2, 3?) I started seeing the references to Julia’s Fairies publications as simply: JF… The independent life of these two letters still means a lot to me.